Into the Distance: A Star-Swept Field
by jtm1848
Summary: A repurposed version of "Broken Bow."


_Author's note: Despite being in the middle of the fourth season, I started work on "Broken Bow" one day, and didn't want to discard it. Thus, I've repurposed the episode into the fourth season, starting a story-arc placing the _Enterprise _along the Klingon border (culminating with "Affliction"/"Divergence"). _ _The Vulcan sub-plot has been stripped out, but the rest remains more-or-less intact as a simple mission to return a Klingon to his homeworld._

"baQa'!"

Driving himself forward with the snarled invective, the burly Klingon charged forward, plowing his way through the forehead-height stalks and greenery that seemed to plague this ghay'cha' world, the most useless of the backwater planets that harried him with their very existence. With each footfall, he forced himself to shift direction, dodging to each side to avoid the whip-like effect of the plants lashing back into place; more than one rivulet of purple blood ran down his face, testament to his prior efforts to barrel his way forward without regard of his surroundings.

Behind him, he could barely hear the stealthy pursuers, wisp-like creatures who made their way through the slaloms with the grace of mistrals, sliding to each side without so much as a pause in forward movement; barely heard, yet he could feel their presence, the shifting gusts and chilling tempests. The urge to turn and fight, to charge headfirst into glorious battle, his d'k'tahg in one hand and a fist in the other, was nearly overpowering; but he fought the urge, relishing even in the battle as he pressed onward through the misbegotten fauna of this wasteland world.

With scarcely a warning, he burst into a clearing, a circular opening of maybe ten yards diameter; an open shooting range for the energy weapons possessed by his pursuers, and yet his hopes increased. In the center—dominating the clear-cut gap, was a tall cylinder, a farm silo of sorts; insufficient for defense, but perhaps, he thought, with tactics scampering across his mind, a tactical advantage. A trap of sorts, a method to waylay his pursuers, gain a critical edge…

Around the side of the metallic shed, he found a door; and with one shoulder low, he pressed it open, bursting inside. The door itself would be but a momentary stall; his pursuers, devils to their core, could flatten their skeletal structure in unnatural ways, allowing them ingress through the gap beneath. But that would gain him a second or two, the edge he needed to get ahead.

With a bellowing charge, the Klingon erupted out the side of the silo from on high, tucking and rolling as he fell the five or so meters to the ground with the natural grace of a cannonball. Hitting the ground, he snarled again, feeling the shooting pain piercing his left ankle; but that was of no concern. He could see them, he saw them, and his pursuers were following his steps precisely as he anticipated. First one slid under the door, then opened it from within; and the Klingon waited patiently as the fractions of a second expired, his disruptor pistol grasped in two hands and pointed at the broadside of the silo.

When the door slammed shut behind the second pursuer, he fired a single bolt.

What the pursuers didn't know—what he hadn't known, until he entered the silo himself—was that a large tank sat inside. Coming from a farming colony himself, the Klingon immediately recognized it for what it was. Fertilizer. He was willing to take the chance.

The single bolt of energy screamed through the thin walls of the silo, and slammed into the tank, bursting its way through to the heavily-compressed nitrates inside, and the silo exploded into a towering fireball, black smoke billowing upward on waves of heat as the debris rained downward, slamming to the ground mercifully far from the Klingon.

Still sitting on his ass, the Klingon allowed himself to fall backward, catching himself on his elbows, and he let out a satisfied laugh.

The farmer didn't know what to think.

Here, in the peaceful cornfields, his croplands seemed to be the center of a running battle. Energy bolts—distinctive, even from a distance—shot over the tassels of the corn stalks, in the approximate direction of some massive creature that was plowing its way through the field beneath the August sun.

Nevermind what it is, he thought to himself, standing up from the dining table. His meal would have to wait. Whatever was out there…didn't belong out there.

Arming himself with an old-fashioned, pump-action kinetic shotgun, he made his way out the door in a flash, his fork barely having time to hit the plate behind him. The action was easy to find, easy to track—even in the absence of the energy bolts, the targeted creature bulldozed its way through the field with the grace of a determined boar.

There, heading towards the silo. His own feet pounded on dusty soil as the farmer crossed the yard and, splitting his way between the stalks, entered the field beyond, moving between the plants with the grace born of a lifelong caretaker.

The field went suddenly silent.

His senses on alert, the farmer slowed as he neared the silo. The crashing sounds had ceased, the energy bolts had ceased—

The concussive wave of heat knocked the farmer to his feet.

Shaking his head, clearing the shattered cobwebs and bloody spots before his eyes, the farmer looked up in artificially-muted astonishment at the towering pillar of fire where the silo once stood, topped off with a ballooning ball of thick, blackened smoke. Coherent thoughts struggled to form in his mind, but gut feelings and instincts drove him staggering to his feet. Somewhere—somewhere up ahead—one of those creatures must've done this to his silo, and was suddenly a far greater danger than before.

Still teetering on his feet, the farmer lurched through the haze, indelicately careening his way through the flattened cornstalks that now lay at his feet, his senses warring between stunned somnolence and heightened alert. He was no veteran of the battlefield—what human of this era was?—but he did his best to peer forward, shaking away the blood clot that clouded his vision.

There, up ahead. Sitting on the ground was a person…or was it? Uncertain if his vision was betraying him, the farmer blinked ferociously, trying to clear his eyesight and fix on the object. It's not human, he noted, but that was of little immediate consequence. This being had likely just destroyed his silo.

"You there!" the farmer shouted, bringing the point of his shotgun to an unsteady bearing on the alien. "Who are you!"

"bachHa' Da'vI'!" the being snarled back incoherently, leaping to its feet as it spoke.

The farmer shook his head, uncertain if he was hearing correctly. "I don't know who you are!" he responded, shoutly loudly yet barely hearing himself. "But I assure you, I know how to use this thing!"

"mevyap!" The being started to advance on the farmer, and the farmer was unwilling to wait any longer. With the squeeze of the trigger, and the spat of a plasma packet, the alien was sent reeling backwards, a burning hole ripping through its chest.

In some ways, it made sense; in others, it perplexed Captain Archer. Deep in the heart of Starfleet Medical was a lightly-secured ward, a small collection of insulated rooms designed to hold patients who required a constant, vigilant eye from unwanted security guards. It was the greatest allowance that Starfleet Medical would make for having armed guards on the complex grounds.

Here, today, four armed security officers stood in the observation area off the main treatment room, even though their utility was questionable. The patient—the cause of the stir—was unconscious, and unlikely to attempt to escape; not even a hint of an outside effort to free him had been detected; and his pursuers were dead, their genetic fragments verified in the raining, fiery debris of the silo explosion.

And yet the patient needed the watchful eye of Medical's small security detachment.

For on the table, laying inert, was a Klingon. Multiple tubes extruded from his body, indicating the seriousness of his condition.

Not much was known about the distant species, save what the Vulcans had unwillingly disclosed a priori; this was Starfleet's first encounter with the craggy-headed race. But the Klingon reputation preceded itself.

And then, there was the sheer uncertainty surrounding this Klingon's presence on Earth, which had garnered much attention within the halls of not just Starfleet, but the Vulcan Embassy.

"So that's the whole story?" Archer asked belatedly, realizing that Admiral Williams had stopped talking almost a minute previously. In the short interim since the captain was escorted into the bowels of the semi-secured facility, the admiral had taken the lead, explaining the unlikely story of the Klingon patient. "We have no idea what he's doing here?"

Admiral Williams shook his head. "We searched him thoroughly," the admiral remarked. His voice was somewhat low, even though the remainder of the observers could hear him handily. "We found nothing unusual…nothing that would explain what he's doing here. Or why he was being pursued."

Archer frowned. "And the attackers?" he asked, searching for any uncovered clues.

Williams shook his head again. "We're still analyzing the biological samples. We're not even sure what race they are."

"We do know one thing." Another voice intruded, this one higher-pitched and almost snarky in tone. "The Klingons want him back."

Archer turned slightly to face Admiral Gardner. Gardner—the third member of Starfleet's admiralty triumvirate, and the presumed candidate to replace Admiral Forrest as the chief-of-staff—was already grating on the captain's nerves. "How do we know that?" Archer asked, keeping his voice steady.

Gardner nearly bowed out of the way as another observer, this one Vulcan, spoke up. "The Klingon Empire contacted Vulcan," Ambassador Soval observed. The Vulcan ambassador to Earth, accompanied by two aides, made up the remainder of the crowded observation room. "Evidently, the Klingon Command has quite an interest in retrieving your patient."

"It is quite anomalous," added the first aide, a younger, dark-haired Vulcan named Skon. "The Klingons generally have no regard for their dead."

Archer furrowed a brow, unintentionally imitating the Vulcan gesture of confusion. "But he's not—he's still alive, right?"

Soval nodded. "For now, he is. But his condition is near-fatal. The Klingons have…strong cultural taboos about treatment of such serious injuries."

"The Klingons prefer to let their injured die." Williams chimed in, his terseness showing his discomfort with the concept.

"It is a highly-involved notion," Skon responded. "The Klingons have a warrior's notion of honor, and how honorable a Klingon's life—and death—is, determines what happens to the Klingon in the afterlife. In that regard, it is far preferable for a Klingon to die an honorable death and travel to Sto'vo'khor than it is to live a dishonorable life and ultimately travel to Gre'thor."

"But—" Archer's thoughts swam, feeling like he was missing a piece of the puzzle. "You're saying that, even if he can be saved, it would…cause him dishonor?"

"A warrior's injuries are his battlefield accomplishments," Skon answered. "To deny him is injuries denies him his honor."

"Even if he dies from them," Williams added, scowling. "Our hands might be tied on this one, Jonathan. The Klingons expect a body, and not a live one."

"But…" A sly smile crossed the captain's face as he thought. "What if we did return them a live Klingon?"

Gardner opened his mouth to retort, but Williams made a point to jump in first. "What are you thinking, Captain?" he asked. His eyes expressed a degree of encouragement that conflicted with his scowl.

Archer got the message. "I'm no doctor," the captain continued, taking care to not provide Gardner with a chance. "But it sounds like this man's injuries are not fatal. With the right care, we can keep him alive, and perhaps even fix him up. If we return a perfectly cured Klingon to the Empire, then how would they even know that he might've died from those injuries?"

Gardner cleared his throat roughly. "The decision's already been made, Captain," the admiral replied. "Our medical efforts are to cease, and a Vulcan cruiser will be returning him to the homeworld."

Archer's head nearly spun around. "Who made that decision?"

"We did." The third Vulcan, a tall, slim man with oddly-red hair intervened. "Vulcan has established diplomatic relations with the Klingons, whereas humans have not. We have studied their culture extensively, whereas humans have not. And we know how and when to tread lightly, whereas humans…do not." The Vulcan's voice was sharp, as if brokering no dissent.

Archer quashed his initial response. "Ambassador," he said instead, turning to face Soval. "If I'm not mistaken, this man is under Earth's jurisdiction, and not Vulcan's."

"We agreed," Gardner cut in. "We don't need to make another enemy, Captain."

Archer closed his eyes and counted to three, weighing just how far he could push. "Under that logic, Admiral," he replied, "we'd never leave our own solar system."

"Perhaps that would be for the best," the third Vulcan shot in. "Earth has already suffered enough from you going blindly where you've never gone before." His voice carried a wry, insulting tone, leaving little doubt that he understood the context of the phrase.

Archer took a deep breath, pondering his next move. Williams was on board, and Gardner was against. The Vulcans were clearly—wait. "Ambassador," Archer spoke again, turning to look at Soval.

The dignified Vulcan raised an eyebrow in response. "You and I have spoken about humanity's remarkable proclivity for friendship," Soval admitted. "But this is not a far-distant foe who presents little other threat to the quadrant. Irritating the Klingons will destabilize their relations with Vulcan as well, among others. You are not accustomed to maintaining peace with a belligerent race that resides right on your border, Captain. We are. I applaud your instincts, Captain, and your belief in your abilities. But this is an occasion that requires us to step softly and speak diplomatically. Forgive me for saying so, but that is not you."

Soval seemed to flare his nostrils with thought. "However," the Vulcan ambassador continued, "recent events have made us aware that Vulcan is not in a position to tell Earth how it must conduct its interstellar affairs." The admission was remarkable, but Soval made it appear nonchalant as he turned his head slightly. "We leave the decision up to you, Admirals."

Gardner cleared his throat intrusively. "My opinion has not changed, Ambassador," he answered. "Captain Archer and his crew are not suited to undertake this mission. Vulcan is. We appreciate your support in this matter, but I defer to a Vulcan ship with a Vulcan crew."

Soval cocked both eyebrows in response as Williams graced the gathering with a sly smile. "On the other hand," he entered, speaking genially, "this is not strictly a Starfleet decision, and not solely up to us. I spoke with the Foreign Ministry earlier today, Admiral." He nodded towards Gardner, who was rapidly turning red. "They seem to have greater faith in our abilities to strike a hand of peace in the heart of belligerence. They value your input, Ambassador," Williams noted, this time with a nod of recognition to Soval. "And they will be delighted to hear that you concur with your judgment. On the orders of the Foreign Minister, the Enterprise will leave for Kronos at its earliest opportunity."

"We start here, Captain," Travis explained, pointing to a single, oversized pinprick of light in the center of the room. Following his lunch with Trip, Archer had summoned the navigator, and the two returned to the Enterprise; now they stood in the middle of a darkened room, surrounded by over a hundred points of light that seemed to hang, suspended, in the open space. The stellar cartography lab utilized the best holographic technology that Starfleet had, and the experience of standing amid the stars never failed to amaze the captain. "This is Earth."

"Right," Archer acknowledged a second later. Within a fifty light-year radius of Earth, there were nearly two thousand stars spread across fourteen hundred star systems, but set to its current scale, the starfield only marked slightly over a hundred. Archer knew that, if they zoomed in closer, hundreds more stars would appear; and if they zoomed out, the lesser stars would drop off, to be replaced by many more further out.

Travis shifted the starfield to place Earth's solar system in one corner, thus emphasizing the galactic southeast quadrant. "For the first leg, we follow the Rigelian trade corridor." A red line emerged before them; it traveled directly from Earth to Vulcan, before turning slightly to speed past Deneva Prime en route to Beta Rigel. That route, approximately thirty-five light-years, would take the Enterprise a full week at maximum warp, assuming that no distractions occurred.

Of course, the last time the Enterprise had traveled down the trade corridor, it had been waylaid by Orions.

"Then we break out into new space." Mayweather's smile could be heard in the star-lit darkness. "The Klingon homeworld is another sixty-three light-years, but most of that is only lightly explored. The Vulcans have relied mainly on unmanned probes to chart it."

And unmanned probes, Archer noted silently, are just not the same. "So we're looking at nearly three weeks?" he asked, running the simple math through his head.

"That's right, sir," Travis answered. "As the Great Bird flies. When you account for—any bumps along the way, we could be looking at a full month out and a full month back."

Archer broke a smile. "And Admiral Williams said to not hurry back. Think about it, Travis…we get to go where no human's gone before."

Unbidden memories of the Delphic Expanse resurfaced in Jonathan Archer's mind.

It wasn't the heat so much as the humidity that took him back to the homeworld of a long-extinct species. That race, too, inhabited a tropical rainforest; tall, thick trees soaring overhead, branches interlaced into a vast canopy that both sheltered and sustained the luscious undergrowth far beneath, sealing in the downpours that struck periodically with instantaneous, drenching impact. The morning dew never seemed to disappear, and an entire biosphere of humidity was held within, replete with fist-sized insects and multitudinous birds of which no two seemed alike. It was a world unto its own, the home of a civilization deceased many generations past…that, somehow, was still able to metamorphosize his genetic structure.

The thought made Archer shake his head in disbelief.

Rather, here, in the dense world of the regrown Amazon jungle, far out in the depths of the rainforest, Earth's bioengineers had created an acreage-wide clearing for the Brazilian Institute, the home of humanity's efforts to preserve dead and dying languages. The acreage was beautifully sculpted into a rough square, surrounded on all sides by the jungle, situated like a diamond across the cardinal directions. In the southern corner was an artificial pond; in the northern corner, a round building, several stories high, flanked by the two rectangular dormitories that served as home for the Institute's staff and students. Thermoconcrete walkways were interspersed in geometric design, the whole complex built of a light gray that blended in like natural stone.

"Ghlungit !tak nekleet!" The shrilling, clicking words brought Archer back from reverie. He had come to the Institute for a reason, and it had brought him to one of the quads, were an outdoor language lesson was taking place.

"Ghlungit !tak nekleet!" The group of students, maybe a dozen in number, responded with remarkable ease. They were spread out in a rough semi-circle, sitting in portable chairs.

"Very good," the teacher, a petite, young woman of Japanese descent, responded. Although Archer's ears perceived no difference, the teacher pressed again. "Ghlungit !tak nekleet!"

"Ghlungit !tak nekleet!" the class echoed back, and Archer again could not distinguish the difference.

"Much better!" the teacher replied, but her face did not break its stern expression as she singled out a particular student. "Carlos: Ltrunghi !krgltt!"

It sounded faintly like a gargling whistle, but the student nonetheless gave it a try. "Ltrunghi !krgltt!" he echoed, nearly losing the last note in his throat.

The teacher shook her head. "!krgltt!" she repeated, emphasizing each note sharply.

"!krgltt!"

The teacher shook her head again. "Tighten the back of your tongue," she suggested. "!krgltt!"

"!krgltt!" the student responded, and he tried again. "!krgltt!"

Archer cleared his throat, and the teacher noticed him for the first time. "Captain!" Hoshi Sato's face brightened into a broad smile. "Keep trying, Carlos," she advised. "I'll be right back."

"There are two more weeks before exams," Hoshi replied after listening to the captain's proposal. The two officers were strolling along a walkway, this one jutting its way into the leafy rainforest beyond the complex. "It's impossible to leave now."

"You've got to have someone who can cover for you," Archer countered, hearing the weakness in his words even as he spoke. If there was someone who could cover for Hoshi, then, well, he wouldn't need her. But her linguistical skills were unparalleled, even by the other instructors at the Institute.

Hoshi smiled, almost coyly. "If there was anyone else who could do what I do, you wouldn't need me," she answered, having clearly caught the flaw in Archer's position.

"Hoshi…" Archer came to a slow stop. "You're the best, Hoshi," he replied simply. "We need you for this mission."

Hoshi shook her head. "I'm sorry, Captain," she answered. "I have…responsibilities here."

Archer let out a deep sigh. "I could order you."

Hoshi smiled again. "I'm on medical leave from Starfleet, remember?" she replied. "You would have to forcibly recall me, and you would have to get Dr. Phlox to sign off on it," she continued, referring to the Enterprise's chief medical officer. "He's the person who approved my leave in the first place."

"It's not my first choice, Hoshi," Archer admitted. Since the Enterprise's return from the Expanse, Hoshi had demonstrated a marked reluctance to return to space; he had tempted her back for a couple missions, but in the last month and a half of downtime since the death of Admiral Forrest, Hoshi had settled in quickly to her old life at the Institute. "In fact, I checked around for someone else, but no one quite made the cut. We need you for this one."

"And the next one?" Hoshi countered wryly. "And what about after that?"

"Very well." Archer pulled an audioplayer from his pocket. Pushing play, a harsh, guttural interjection sounded from it.

Against her own will, Hoshi cocked her head and listened carefully. "What's that?" she asked curiously. "I'm not familiar with it."

"It's a language called 'Klingon,'" Archer replied. "Eighty poly-guttural dialects constructed on an adaptive syntax." I have no idea what I just said.

Hoshi bit her lower lip as she spoke. "Can you turn it up?"

A Suliban Helix is built like a living body.

It starts with a cell-ship. Scarcely two meters in diameter, large enough for one, maybe two crew, they work in groups, necessary to form a collective warp field to propel the miniaturized craft to superluminal speeds. The skin was made of fluidic metal that, when pressed together with others of its like, flowed together; opening on the interior, it formed a short tube with airtight seals, turning the two cell-ships into one, four into one, six into one.

But that was scarcely the beginning, for a body has working organs to power it, manage it, maintain it, and conduct the various duties necessary to give life to the greater whole. And a full-size Helix, itself like a miniature city, was composed of far more than cell-ships. There were also the organ-ships; each one was specialized to a certain duty.

The Suliban themselves mirrored the craft of their homes. A solid structure of bone and muscle, not much different from humans, made up the interior of their bodies, much as support beams and sheeting made up the interior of each ship. But stretched across the outside was an oddly-fluidic skin; not necessarily capable of forming coherent, unique shapes, so much as in constant movement, like the waves atop a sea or the ripples atop a lake, but cast in shades of yellow and green.

Here, in one particular Helix, in one particular chamber, stood one particular Suliban. His name was Silik, and he held little importance in the piecemeal hierarchy of the Helix. In fact, it was but a waypoint for him and his own small grouping of Suliban, a place to hitch their organ-ships and rest awhile, partake in the social gatherings of vagabonds and vagrants before they struck out again. Clad in dark red, the only noticeable distinction between him and the Suliban Common was that his face did not seem to express the same tired world-weariness of the other cells.

The chamber, too, was nondescript; roughly dome-shaped, support beams ran vertically from the floor to the peak at regular intervals, interspersed with sheeting and panels of computer controls. The whole chamber was dark, as was the entire interior of the Helix; power was at a premium, and in this case, the average-looking Silik possessed eyesight that had been modified to see in the darkness.

But in the center was something different, something foreign. The machinery itself was simplistic, and clearly functioned as little more than a receiver for the main unit located elsewhere. Four beams sat on a round platform, just a meter in diameter, and cast a red glow into the blue mist within.

Standing in the swirling blue mist was a humanoid shadow, and that was the best that Silik could describe; it was a three-dimensional shadow, containing no solid form but its darkness. Two arms, two legs, a torso and a head completed it, but no details differentiated themselves to distinguish a species or a race.

"Where's our Klingon friend?" The shadow spoke to Silik, and the words themselves were wavy, as if registering simultaneously in different wavelengths.

"The humans have him." Silik tilted his head until it hung almost upside down, waiting for the joints of his neck to crack and pop.

The shadow sounded perturbed in multiple tones. "Did you lose your men?"

"Two of them," Silik countered, voicing his own displeasure. "One of them was a friend. Can you prevent it?"

"Our agreement doesn't provide for correcting mistakes," the shadow observed. "Now recover the Klingon."

Chapter Two

Hoshi clucked.

"I didn't realize you spoke slug," Phlox responded a moment later, casting the words with a warm smile. He was puttering around sickbay, organizing the raft of medical supplies he had received prior to the Enterprise's departure from Earth a day earlier. His ward—normally well-organized and polished, albeit somewhat cacophonous, was still in a state of relative disarray due to the rushed launch and the presence of the currently-sedated Klingon passenger.

"Wish I did," Hoshi admitted softly. Amid the doctor's menagerie was one little creature, a three-inch alien slug of no distinction. Housed in a small plastic container, it sat on a rock, unmoving beneath the faux-sunlight bulb. "She doesn't look any better, does she?"

Phlox glanced over at the young lieutenant. "She?" he remarked, curious about the characterization. "We haven't been able to determine its gender yet. That is, if it even has one," he added wryly. "Or just one."

Hoshi sighed deeply. "Why don't we take her home?" she suggested melancholically. "She wasn't meant to be in this environment."

"Nonsense," Phlox answered, wondering if Hoshi was referring to the slug or to herself. If so, he was still hesitant; she could be referring to Brazil, or she could be referring to the Khshathra Vairya sanitarium in the Vulcan system, where she had stayed for two months following their return from the Delphic Expanse. Choosing to deliberately blur all three options, he gestured around them with his hands. "We brought its environment with us."

"It just isn't the same." Hoshi knelt down before the slug, placing her chin on her hands and inching her nose close to the translucent material. "I mean…it's not the same, Phlox," she said slowly, as if struggling to find the words. "I mean…I don't know, Phlox." She stood back up suddenly. "It's the same, but it's different."

"Oh, I assure you, the environment is quite the same." Phlox graced Hoshi with another warm smile. "You've done this before, Lieutenant. And quite successfully, I might add."

"I know," Hoshi countered, and she nearly snarled with frustration. "So why is it so hard now?"

"The environment might be the same, but you're not," Phlox noted calmly. "None of us are, Lieutenant. Things change in the most peculiar ways when you confront the darkness within."

Archer's ears pounded with the pulsing of blood as the doors to sickbay slid open before him. The scene before him was chaotic, and it took a second to bring it all in, to sort out the disparate pieces happening before him; the alarms ringing, Phlox barking instructions to the nurse, and Hoshi, hunched ever-so-tentatively near the Klingon, on the verge of backing away from the thrashing alien, but they all yielded before the guttural screams of their Klingon patient.

"Pung ghap!" Kla'ang shouted, struggling beneath the physical restraints securing him to the primary biobed. He rolled back and forth, twisting and contorting his body as he sought to break the security belts holding him down. "Pung ghap!"

Their prisoner—patient, Archer corrected himself—didn't seem to be dying, and that saved the first of the captain's worries. "Doctor! Lieutenant!" Archer hollered out himself, trusting his subordinates to sort out who should answer first. In the midst of the frenzy, it was a struggle to propel his own voice to the forefront. "What's wrong?!"

Hoshi didn't look up as Archer reached the biobed, bending forward from the opposite side. "I'm not sure, sir!" she countered, her voice peaking with shrill hesitation. "The translator is. That is, it won't lock onto his dialect. The syntax won't align!"

"So what's he saying, Hoshi?" Archer demanded firmly.

"I just told you, sir." Hoshi's voice crept up towards panic. "The-the translator doesn't understand him!" Desperate, she looked up at the captain, and he met her eye-to-eye.

"Forget the translator, Hoshi," Archer commanded. Despite the frenetic activity surrounding them, he kept his voice low and steady. "Speak to him. You can do this."

Kla'ang heaved his torso upward, sending Archer reeling back. "DujDaj Hegh!"

Hoshi nodded as she gulped. "What should I tell him?"

"Tell him—tell him that we're taking him home," Archer directed, returning to the bedside. The restraints were nothing to be trifled with, but the Klingon's show of strength demanded the captain's respect.

Hoshi swallowed hard. "lngan Hoch juH!" she barked out, her voice wavering. "lgnan Hoch juH!"

Kla'ang snarled angrily. "Iujpa'qyl Dun!" he answered, looking straight at Hoshi.

Hoshi looked up at the captain, and Archer stared back. "What did he say, Hoshi?" Archer responded roughly.

Hoshi glanced at the useless translator before answering. "I-I think he wants to know who we are!"

Archer glared at the lieutenant. "So tell him!"

"Ou'ghewme Enterprise!" Hoshi barked out, nearly swallowing the second syllable in the bottom of her throat. "PugloD!"

"Nenta lupHom!" Kla'ang barked back, his entire body starting to spasm as he fought the restraints. "Nenta lupHom!"

"I know that one!" Hoshi cried out happily. "Ship! He's asking for his ship back!"

Archer shook his head, knowing that the answer was bad. "Tell him—say it was destroyed," the captain commanded, hoping for the best.

Hoshi nodded acknowledgement. "Sonchl!"

Archer tensed himself, waiting for Kla'ang's explosion, but it never came. "Sonchl?" The Klingon looked at Hoshi with a quizzical expression, his tone notably subdued.

Archer relaxed minutely. "Hoshi, tell him it was the Suliban."

"Suliban?!" Now, hearing the word, Kla'ang exploded, driving both Starfleet officers back on their heels. "Suliban Gre'thor!"

"Yes!" Archer responded fiercely, hoping his tone would carry. "The Suliban Sonchl lupHom, not us!"

Kla'ang spat in fury. "Vengen Sto'vo'kor Dos!"

Hoshi's face tightened in panic. "I don't know that one, sir!" Her voice rang with shrillness. "I think he's saying something about eating the afterlife!"

Huh? "Try the translator again, Hoshi."

Hoshi shook her head. "It's no good, sir! I'm going to need to run what we've got through the phonetic processor!"

Kla'ang spasmed again. "MajOa blmoHgu!"

"He says—" Hoshi clenched her eyelids tight as she thought. "He says his wife has grown ugly?" She let out a loud sigh of frustration, the sound feuding with the Klingon's incoherent babbling. "I'm sorry, Captain, I'm doing the best I can!"

Phlox chose that moment to enter the shouted conversation. "Excuse me!" he countered, brusquely pushing his way in front of Archer. He hit Kla'ang square in the neck with a hypospray. "His pre-frontal cortex is hyper-stimulated. I doubt he has any idea what he's saying."

As if to agree, Kla'ang spasmed one last time, his body rapidly and visibly tiring. "HljolOaOgu'na!"

"That doesn't even make sense, Captain," Hoshi added on. "Unless stinky boots has something to do with this?"

"OaOgu'na!"

Hoshi wasn't sure that Kla'ang's invection was even a real Klingon word.

"OaOgu'na!" Kla'ang repeated again, but his thrashing had largely stopped; his body was sinking back into the cushioned bed, and his eyes rolled up, as if passing out.

Archer mentally counted to three and took a deep breath. Nothing happened. "Okay," he said, giving a steadying command. "Everyone take a breath. Doctor, what was that all about?"

"You might have to ask the Lieutenant, Captain," Phlox replied, running a medical scanner over the Klingon's body. "I didn't understand a word of it."

"I think Kla'ang understands that the Suliban destroyed his ship, Captain," Hoshi admitted. Her voice trembled slightly as her pulse refused to return to normal. "But beyond that, he—" A vast shroooom resounded through the room, and in unison, three heads looked upward, as if to see the bridge. "Did we just drop out of warp?"

Archer flipped open his handheld communicator. "Bridge," he barked out. "Report!"

Commander T'Pol's voice sounded unusually tiny. "We've dropped out of warp, sir," the Vulcan science officer reported from overhead. "Main power—"

The overhead lights switched off, leaving sickbay bathing in the glow of emergency lighting.

"Commander!" Travis Mayweather called out, taking the lead in announcing the obvious. A moment earlier, the bridge had been plunged into the eerie glow of emergency lighting as the primary power systems suddenly cut out; his helm control was still operational, in a manner, but the Enterprise was stopped dead in space. "We've dropped out of warp."

"I'm receiving reports from all decks!" Ensign Stali added, spinning about in his console at communications. "We're losing power everywhere—"

"I'm reading something off starboard!" Malcolm Reed cut in brusquely. His tactical sensors had lit up a bare second before the power cut out, but running on backup systems only, he was now struggling to identify it. "It's a ship of some kind!"

T'Pol rose smoothly from the command chair. "Ensign Stali," she ordered first, glancing back over one shoulder. "We need a report from main engineering. Commander Reed—" she turned her head again, now glancing over the other shoulder. "Please identify the ship."

"I'm not sure, Commander!" Malcolm responded. He punched his controls furiously, but they were lagging, struggling to draw enough power to do their job. "I only saw it for a second, just as power was going down. It was small, like—"

"Like a Suliban cell ship," T'Pol offered, completing the thought. The Suliban had dogged the Enterprise before, and had demonstrated a remarkable proclivity for interfering with the ship's systems. But if it was the Suliban…

Archer flinched as he saw a darkened form move in the shadows of sickbay.

"Auxiliary power is not responding!" Travis reported, trying to coax his sluggish controls along. "Engines are offline."

"Auxiliary systems should have kicked in by now!" Malcolm added from the rear of the bridge. There, too, he was fighting with sluggish controls.

T'Pol stayed one step ahead. "Captain!" she called out, flipping open a handheld communicator. "Captain Archer, answer!"

The emergency systems in sickbay went offline, plunging the compartment into darkness.

That shouldn't happen, Archer noted, pausing his breath as he concentrated on hearing. Even the overhead air circulation had cut out, leaving sickbay silent, but for the raking snores of their Klingon passenger. From the rear corner, a simple flashlight beam shot forward, darting rapidly around the room; the on-duty security officer, Ensign Perri O'Connell, was taking a calculated risk in showing her own location, but she was doing her best to hide her own location at the source of the beam.

Archer tensed, concentrating his own senses into the darkness on the periphery of the light. There is someone here, he recognized, more from reasoning than from his senses. Someone's coming for Kla'ang.

The light flashed over movement. "Ensign!" Archer shouted, hoping that O'Connell had seen it. It blurred into the ceiling overhead like a chameleon, noticeable only by the scuttling movement of its faint outline.

The flashlight wavered for a second, and shot back as O'Connell compensated. Another beam—this one a compressed ray of phased energy—shot out from the ensign's location, ripping through the space that the shape had inhabited a scarce moment before.

A rattle came from behind, and the energy beam shot forth again, this time rewarded by a soft thud; but it was far away from the first sighting, too far away to be the same being. There were at least two intruders present.

Travis breathed silent relief as the primary lighting came back online.

"Commander!" Malcolm called out. "I'm reading a pack of Suliban cell ships, taking off at high warp! They're—they're gone, sir."

Sickbay had snared a Suliban raider, but the biobed was empty. Kla'ang was gone.

"We've got state of the art sensors!" Jonathan Archer growled as he paced about the briefing room. The rear alcove of the bridge was small, barely large enough to hold the central console and the senior staff; the Enterprise designers had not made it comfortably large enough to accommodate an irate captain. "Why the hell didn't we detect them?"

Travis ventured in first. "Commander Reed thought he detected something right before we lost power," he offered. The navigator and fourth officer was standing loosely around the main console with the remainder of the command crew.

Malcolm shook his head. "The starboard sensors recorded a brief spatial disturbance," he admitted as he punched a series of commands into the console. "But it looked more like a sensor glitch." The questioned sensor data popped up, scrolling across the tabletop screen.

Trip Tucker read it carefully for a second, then shook his head as well. "That is a glitch," the engineer pronounced. "We've been able to detect them before. Why couldn't we this time?"

"Those weren't glitches in sickbay," Hoshi countered. She shuddered slightly at the thought, still ill at ease following the raid. "And that's a real Suliban we have laying on the biobed."

"So how did they sneak up on us?" Archer growled again, still pacing about the room. "T'Pol, do you at least have a theory?"

The Vulcan science officer raised a solitary eyebrow. "I have several ideas," she stated, "but nothing strong enough to be considered a 'theory,' Captain."

"So speculate for me, Commander," Archer countered.

"Our sensors may be state of the art by our standards," Malcolm added, "but we know they don't detect everything. The Suliban ships were using some sort of power drive that doesn't register on them…doesn't that give us a start?"

"Wait, run that sensor data again!" Trip exclaimed. Unperturbed, Malcolm keyed in the commands, and the engineer bent down with his eyes barely above the readout. "See that readout right—there, Malcolm? It's faint, but it's regular."

"Are you sure that's not background radiation?" Malcolm asked, somewhat surprised. The questioned reading was extremely faint, its pattern unremarkable. "That looks like a regular stellar phenomena."

"We've detected them before," Trip repeated, his certainty strengthening. "Either they wanted us to, or they're utilizing brand-new engines. Now, we can't detect the engines themselves, but what happens when you cram a brand-new engine design into an older model starship?"

"They don't match perfectly," Malcolm replied, tracking the thought as he spoke. "There are glitches, mismatches, problems in the fit. And sometimes—"

"It releases loose radiation," Trip finished, a smile on his face. "Radiation that we can track."

Archer chose the moment to weigh in. "T'Pol?" he asked, seeking the input of his science officer.

T'Pol seemed quite surprised as Trip isolated the single line of radiation on the console screen. "It matches a tricyclic plasma drive," she answered. "But those drives are only theoretical."

"It looks real enough for me," Trip replied, still smiling. "Captain, I'll need T'Pol and Malcolm down in the sensor bay to tweak the relays. We might just be able to follow this damn thing."

"It might also help to know where Kla'ang has been," Travis suggested, adding a new thought to the conversation. "If we can backtrack his route."

"Maybe he's encountered the Suliban before," Hoshi Sato added. "He might have some intel to help us track them."

Archer smiled. This is my crew. "Trip, Malcolm, T'Pol, report to the sensor bay. Hoshi, Travis, report to the command center. I'll get a full copy of Kla'ang's logs from Starfleet immediately. Let's go."

Kla'ang twisted his body furiously as he sought to break free of the restraints. He wasn't interested so much in escaping; but he wanted to punch his interrogator square in the mouth.

"Where is it?" Silik was demanding, bending low to bring his face directly over the Klingon's. The two were isolated in a small chamber, buried deep in what presumably was the Suliban Helix, and the room smelled disgustingly of alien chemicals; not the animalistic richness of a Klingon ship. "Where is it!"

"Du bogh!" Kla'ang bellowed, straining his craggy forehead upward as far as he could. With effort, he was able to lift his head fully two centimeters off the board beneath it; the band holding him down was loosening, one small bit at a time. I don't know.

"We're not going to harm you." Silik's voice was slimy, like that of a ghem-oil salesman. The Suliban himself appeared remarkably pale in the ghostly lighting of the darkened chamber. "Tell me where it is."

"Du bogh!" Kla'ang repeated. I don't know.

Silik let out a sigh and straightened his back. He glanced over at the Suliban doctor, who clung to the shadows on the outskirts of the sphere-shaped room. "Are you certain he's telling the truth?" Silik asked irritably. The drugs should have been working by now; their Klingon captive should be unable to avoid answering a direct question. But did that mean that Kla'ang didn't know?

The doctor nodded in the darkness. "Absolutely certain," he answered. "The drugs are working."

And how can you tell? Silik wondered silently, but he didn't question the doctor out loud. The doctor's potions worked reliably; the key to making such drugs effective lay in the interrogator's ability to ask the right questions.

Silik returned his attention to the Klingon. "Did you leave it on your ship?" he demanded. "It is on the Enterprise?"

"Du bogh guch!" Kla'ang barked back. I don't know what you're looking for.

Silik took a second to organize his thoughts. "What were you doing on Rigel Ten?" he asked instead, tacking down a different track. We'll come at this a different way, he thought, gritting his teeth. He had little patience for extended interrogation.

"MajQa tlham!" Kla'ang fought with himself, but was unable to avoid answering the question. I was sent to meet someone.

Now we're getting somewhere, Silik thought. "Who were you sent to meet?"

"MajQa Suliban rot Sarin Poh nl!" Kla'ang lifted his head again, pressing upward toward the Suliban snake. A female Suliban named Sarin.

The name meant little to Silik—it triggered some distant connection, a faint recollection, but little more. "And what did Sarin give you?"

"RQgh!" Kla'ang snarled furiously. Nothing!

Silik arched his back, missing the days when such an action would stretch his muscles and crack his joints. Perhaps Kla'ang really didn't know anything—the best messenger, Silik realized, is the one who doesn't know the message.

Silik glanced back at the doctor. "Keep him alive while I'm gone," he ordered. He'd return later. Perhaps the drugs needed a little more time.

One last stop before turning in, Archer thought tiredly as he walked down the corridors of E-deck. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, trying to ease the wearied pain building in his temples; it was late at night, far past the end of his regular duty shift, but only now was he finding time to answer the doctor's request some hours ago for the captain's presence.

Doctor Phlox, of course, slept once a year. The good Denobulan physician required a certain amount of downtime, but had often displayed Vulcan-like stamina and midnight dedication to his work.

The sickbay doors hissed open in front of Archer, and the captain stepped through. "Doctor?" he asked as he peered into the medical chambers.

"Back here, Captain!" Phlox called out cheerfully, emerging from his office as he spoke. The doctor was clad in a pair of light-blue scrubs, stained in various places with the remnants of the day's work. "What can I do for you?" he asked, giving the captain a warm smile.

Archer couldn't help but return it as he stepped inward. Taking a quick inventory, he noticed the insensate form of their new patient laying on the primary biobed. "You called for me, remember?"

"Ah, yes, Captain." Phlox took a second to run his hands under the faucet before he continued. "Our Suliban passenger is still quite unconscious, but I've had a chance to do a full medical workup on him. The results are quite extraordinary!"

Archer furrowed his brow; the attack had happened nearly at the crack of alpha shift. "Why is he unconscious?"

Phlox's face fell slightly. "Apparently, the Suliban are more sensitive to the stun effects of a phase pistol," the doctor replied as he tossed his hand towel into an open receptacle. "I expect that he'll sleep through the night."

Archer stifled a yawn. Let's get this moving forward. "So what's so remarkable, Doctor?" he asked.

Phlox gestured towards the overhead readout above the imaging chamber. "Take a look, Captain," he answered. "Our patient is definitely a Suliban. But unless I'm mistaken, he's no ordinary one."

Archer looked up at the display, uncertain of what he was seeing. "What do you mean, Doctor?" he asked, his tired brain simply not up to the task of deciphering the medical cryptology.

"His DNA is Suliban," Phlox replied. He scrounged around a nearby countertop for a handheld remote, and moments later, an anatomical display of the patient appeared on the overhead screen. "But his anatomy's been altered."

Archer's weary senses came alive as the ominous word was dropped. "Altered?" he asked, guardedly. "You mean augmented?"

Phlox nodded. "Look at this lung," he said, maneuvering his controls to call up the image. "Five bronchial lobes where there should only be three. And look at the alveoli clusters—here. They've been modified to process different kinds of atmospheres."

Archer looked down at the patient, as if he could see the changes simply by looking. "And this was intentional?"

Phlox nodded. "This man was the recipient of some very sophisticated genetic engineering," the doctor pronounced. "Watch this." He lifted the patient's right hand, and ran his own underneath it.

Archer stepped back in surprise as the patient's hand seemed to waver and the coloring shifted, as if trying to match its new backdrop.

"Subcutaneous pigment sacs," Phlox explained. "He exercises a fair degree of mental control over it. Ordinarily, we see him—" Phlox put the hand back down. "But if he chose to, he could blend right in to his environment. The eyes are my personal favorite." Bending over the patient, he opened one of the Suliban's eyes, and flashed a microlight into it. "Compound retinas, designed to see nearly the entire wavelength."

"And none of this—" Archer gestured generally at the body in front of him. "None of this is in their genome?"

"None of it, Captain," Phlox confirmed. "All of these are genetic alterations, made at some point after this man reached adulthood."

Archer's mind was beginning to thud with the implications. "Doctor, could these... alterations be connected in any way to Dr. Soong?" The Enterprise's own encounter with Soong's augmented humans was only scarce months behind them.

Phlox shook his head. "This is far more impressive work," he answered, almost regretfully. "The fact is, Captain, I don't know of any species alive today who can do this quality of genetic engineering."

This just got a whole lot deeper.

Hoshi Sato shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir," she replied apologetically, unable to answer the captain's ultimate question. The two officers, Captain and Lieutenant, were joined by Lieutenant Mayweather in the Enterprise's command center, itself a later addition made to the ship for their prior mission to the Delphic Expanse. "I've reviewed the logs from Kla'ang's ship that Starfleet transmitted. They're too badly damaged."

"We've been able to construct the last week or so of Kla'ang's course," Travis added. "Surprisingly enough, we're in the same neighborhood. Before traveling to Earth, he stopped off at Rigel X." Rigel X was the endpoint of the Rigel Corridor, and the jumping-off point for the Enterprise's own charted path to the Klingon homeworld.

Quashing a frown, Archer focused on the positive. "So we know where he was," the captain noted, repeating the information for his own record. "Any indication of what he was doing there?"

"No, sir," Travis answered. "If he kept any mention of it in his ship's logs…they were thoroughly destroyed in the crash."

"I've been able to piece together a word here and there," Hoshi added. "None of them sounded familiar, so I ran them against the Vulcan database. The only hit was on a potential name—Sarin."

Archer raised an eyebrow, and immediately shoved it down; the Vulcan gesture was too much for him. "Sarin?" he echoed.

"It's a proper name," Hoshi replied. "At least, that's how the Vulcans have it recorded. Their Suliban database is remarkably sparse."

"Our working theory is that Sarin was a contact on Rigel X," Travis added, picking up where Hoshi had left off. "But it's a weak connection."

"But it's what we have." Archer smiled, happy to have any leads at all. "Travis, get us back on course for Rigel X. Perhaps—perhaps we'll find Sarin there, after all."

Archer wondered momentarily if they would be the first humans to ever set foot on this particular planet.

If so, he intended to be the first person out of the shuttle.

"As soon as we've tied down," he noted, looking about at the collected party, "we'll be descending into the trade complex." Four members of the crew—Archer, T'Pol, Trip Tucker, and Malcolm—would form the landing party itself, while Travis stayed behind with the shuttlepod. Hoshi had the conn in their absence.

It would not be a simple search—at least, it had the capability to be a frustrating, never-ending fishing expedition. The Rigelian X trading complex consisted of thirty-six levels and covered several square kilometers of terrain, not including the array of landing pads that stretched out much further from the central edifice. Somewhere, perhaps deep inside the heart of the sprawling superstructure, was a single Suliban female—if she was even still there—who was their only known link to tracking the abducted Klingon courier.

"Your translators have been programmed for Rigelian," T'Pol announced formally, with tight, precise wording. "However, you'll encounter numerous other races. Bear in mind that these are not diplomats—the population is predominantly traders, and many of them may be impatient with newcomers. You have a tendency to be gregarious." With that, she shot a dedicated glare at Trip. "I suggest you try to restrain that tendency."

Trip grinned, anticipating his own retort. "You forgot to warn us about the drinking water," he quipped, looking back at the Vulcan woman.

"And don't drink the water without purifying it first." T'Pol's deadpan left in question whether she intended it seriously or as repartee, but just in case, every member of the landing party carried a small pouch of water purification tablets.

Archer indulged himself with a small grin before continuing. "Remember, Kla'ang was merely a courier," he cautioned the assembled group. "We may be encountering the people who sent him on his mission. If so, they may have a lot more to tell us—and more incentive to not."

"A seven-foot Klingon doesn't go unnoticed," Travis added, chiming in. "Somebody must've seen him. Any clues we get—who he talked to, where he ate dinner, even how long he stayed—might help."

"In the meantime, keep your eyes and ears open," Malcolm observed. "This isn't an Orion trading post, but Rigel X has its share of unsavory characters. Watch your back, and only travel in pairs."

The shuttlepod descended into the bluish-white world.

Rigel X was fully sixteen and a half AUs from the central Lagrange point of its binary stars. At its furthest distance, it was nearly as far from the core light and heat as Uranus is from the Sun; at its closest approach, it was barely further than Jupiter.

At either distance, it was a freezing world.

Cloaked in darkness, the closer of the two stars was barely a nickel hovering just over the horizon; the more distant of the two was a dime, higher and further west. The skies were nearly black, hiding the partial covering of clouds composed of frozen droplets of nitrogen and oxygen. A steady, thick snow percolated its way to the landscape below.

Nearly a third of the planet was covered with blue-tinted ice, composed in vast sheets and small floes. Glaciers carved their way through the mountainous crust of the world, and gray, rocky peaks towered overhead, some slicing over a dozen kilometers high. The air was thin, slightly over half the density of Earth's, and at the surface, temperatures never cleared -90 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Rigelians themselves had grown on Rigel V, the first of the circumbinary planets in the system. The primary trading post—and one of the primary trading posts in the near region of space, gathering races from across a fifty light-year diameter—was, however, located farther out, beyond the colonized reaches of the system.

The trading complex itself, Travis noticed immediately, was hard to see in the dense snow. It sat on a rare, rocky plain that stretched between two craggy mountain ranges. It grew upward from the ground far below, in a manner roughly like a pyramid, and on all sides, networks of landing pads sat on stilts, anchored into the rock beneath.

In the thin atmosphere, the air currents were light, allowing for a soft landing as Travis set the shuttlepod down, following the guidance of Rigel X's Traffic Control Center. It was not a bad spot—certainly not far from the main building, given the vast size of the landing fields.

As promised to himself, Archer stepped out first, and immediately it felt as though the interior of his lungs were turning icicle-covered caverns. Even the plasticine breathing mask that covered his nose and mouth, heated as it was, did little to stifle the frightening cold outside. He was, for the uncounted time, grateful for Starfleet's cold-weather suits; the thin fabric he wore as a jumpsuit beneath his duty coveralls fought a remarkable battle against the bitter chill of the surrounding air, and only the uncovered surfaces of his skin could feel the frostbite that threatened to set in within moments of exposure.

It was only a short distance to the tubular walkway, part of a network of conduits that snaked their way across the landing pads. Archer breathed a sigh of warm relief as he stepped inside, as the ambient temperature jumped to something resembling tolerable; the translucent aluminum siding offered a frosted view of the thermoconcrete fields and snow-covered skies beyond, but insulated nicely against the freeze.

The moving walkway within shunted the landing party down three different pathways as it made its way to the central complex, each pathway picking up additional travelers, most of whom were wholly unfamiliar to the captain. He did his best to not stare; but even a veteran of the stars, such as becoming, could not help but be in awe by the various alien races represented on the walkway, and the surprising human gestures that they affected. There was a family, two adults and three children, clearly wore down and tired from their journey; two businesspeople, moving quickly and brusquely, as if easily familiar with the layout of the trading station; and even another newcomer, looking about in gawking awe as the pathway moved beneath its four feet.

Moving at a speed approximating a trodden pace, it took the walkway several minutes to deliver the landing party to the terminating pressure lock. Designed to accommodate multiple people, Archer, T'Pol, Trip, and Malcolm were able to cycle through as a group, and Archer almost felt the urge to remove his breathing mask as the air pressure increased into something resembling Earth norm.

The pressure lock door hissed open, revealing the trading post within.

Malcolm's hand stayed close to his phase pistol as they stepped through.

The cacophony of noise and aromas hit him hard, the two senses warring for his attention as he sought out potential danger. There was always danger, after all, when entering an unknown environment; the Rigelians, by reputation, ran a safe establishment, but even the safest of trading establishments held its share of the con artists, light-weight thieves, and undercover thugs, some of which may be tasked to greet the human (and Vulcan) newcomers with a cool welcome.

They stepped first into a congregating area of sorts, and Malcolm recognized it as the waiting chamber it was; on the walls, large monitors listed flight numbers and times, flickering through multiple alien languages besides the Rigelian common. There were doubtlessly dozens of such areas, spaced around the perimeter of the trading post; and on one wall, Malcolm was able to read the Rigelian characters standing for "47."

From there, the landing party entered a two-meter long tunnel, itself most likely lined by security sensors, and exited directly onto the main floor of the trading bazaar.

"Five or six days ago?" the Rigelian dock master repeated, parroting the question just posed to him. He, like many of his racial kin, had long hair held in beaded braids that framed the raised cartilage of his face. "Do you realize how much traffic we process in a single day?"

Archer held back a sigh of frustration. The landing party had split into pairs, with himself and Malcolm volunteering to query the compound's dock master. "This was a one man Klingon scout ship," he replied, hoping to jog the dock master's recall. He was playing on a hunch that this master—like many—had developed an uncanny memory for ship designs.

The dock master eyed Archer. "And what species are you?" he asked suspiciously, uncertain of just who these newcomers were. The trading post was a vastly cosmopolitan place, hosting many dozens of alien races; but these in front of him were relative newcomers. He had seen a couple, small traders passing through, but had never meet them face-to-face as he was now; and they had definitely never marched into his office, demanding answers to all their questions.

"Humans," Archer answered. He smiled slightly, understanding that the dock master had, in all likelihood, never met a human before. Archer was used to making such introductions, having done it over a dozen times previously. "We're called humans. It's nice-"

A splitting alarm went off suddenly. The dock master raised his communications handset to his mouth, and spoke into it without bothering to consult the monitoring screens. "Elkan nine," he announced gruffly, "raise your approach vector by point two radiants." He hit the alarm button, switching it off, and his attention shifted back to Archer. "A one man Klingon scout ship? We had a K'toch class vessel dock here seven days ago," he said, shifting through his memory. "Its pilot was quite large, even for a Klingon."

Archer gestured towards the monitor. "Does it say who he was here to see?" he asked hopefully. It was possible—albeit unlikely—that Kla'ang had queried the compound's central computer for the location of his contact.

The dock master shook his head. "It says that he arrived at docking port six, and was given a level one biohazard clearance," he answered. "After that, he filed a flight plan to Vulcan, and departed a day later."

Archer decided to try another direction. "Do you have any records of a Suliban vessel coming in around the same time?" he asked.

The dock master eyed the human captain again. "And what is your interest in this Klingon, Captain Archer?" he asked at last, unwilling to accept any more questions without an explanation. The human captain was, clearly, not affiliated with the Rigelian Trade Commission, and had presented no law enforcement protocols.

"He was a courier," Archer answered, taking a second before responding. The dock master's question was valid, and the captain quickly found that he lacked a strong answer. "He was working for some friends of ours. He never arrived at—Vulcan."

The dock master grunted. "Whatever befell him, it wasn't here," the Rigelian answered, unwilling to engage in any more conversation. "I suggest you—" As he spoke, the alarm went off again. "Elkan nine," he repeated, shifting his attention away from the humans.

With a silent nod from Archer, he and Reed slipped out.

Trip watched the show with amazement.

On the stage before him were two women—at least, their curves suggested as such—but the skin of the first woman was blue, and the second purple. Their heads were bare, and their facial skin seemed to be stretched taut, smoothing out some features while accenting ridges elsewhere. They were swaying in beat with a simple drum, moving themselves with each softened sound of the instrument.

But the remarkable part was their tongues.

They must be a foot long, Trip thought as the blue-skinned woman shot her tongue out. She snatched something resembling a butterfly out of midair, pulling it rapidly back into her mouth with elastic ease.

"Would you like to meet them?" Standing between Trip and T'Pol was another man, an alien of unknown race, his face hidden beneath the cowl of a dusty robe. He was clearly the handler of the two women, and ready to make a deal. "I can arrange it."

Less entranced by the show, T'Pol got to the point. "Is this where you saw Kla'ang?" she asked directly.

"I'll show you where," the alien answered, "but first you should enjoy yourselves." The lascivious look on his face was unmistakable, even across interspecies lines. "Which one would you prefer?"

"Neither," T'Pol replied curtly, suppressing the bile that was erupting from her stomach. "You claimed to know something about Kla'ang. What is it?"

"Of course I do," the alien answered. "But why hurry? These beautiful women—" he gestured to the stage. "Are putting on a special show for you. You should stay, and enjoy it."

She sighed inwardly, but gave no visible sign as she looked past the interloper to address Commander Tucker. "We should get going," she stated. What had at first appeared to be a promising lead was turning into another bust.

Trip was still staring at the show in amazement. "Are those real butterflies?" he asked in amazement. "Or some kind of holograms?"

The alien smiled back at Tucker. "Perhaps you would prefer to watch the interspecies performance?" he asked suggestively.

"Commander." T'Pol shot a direct glare at Trip, and this time, the engineer caught on with a sheepish grin. "This man has no intention of helping us." As the two were ducking away, T'Pol's handheld communicator crackled to life.

"Archer to T'Pol." The captain's voice was faint, but understandable, even as the surfeit of noise sought to drown it out.

"Go ahead," she answered, holding the communicator's output close to her ear. It helped her hear, but even more so, it provided a degree of privacy to the conversation.

"Central Security claims to have no record of Kla'ang," Archer reported. Following their stop by the dock master's office, he and Malcolm had dropped in on Central Security. "But they told me about a warehouse on level nineteen where Suliban tend to gather."

T'Pol glanced around, taking a quick bearing. "Where on level nineteen?" she asked.

"The easternmost subsection," Archer answered. "By the geothermal shafts. I'll meet you there as soon as I can. Archer out."

Chapter Three

With a little difficulty, Archer and Malcolm were able to locate the warehouse in question, only to discover that it was not welcoming to visitors. The cavernous room was darkened, with only faint, industrial lighting overhead to illuminate it. The air was cold; not only did the warehouse have a large door opening to the natural environment outside, but little care had been taken to keep it heated. Steam rose in a dozen places, along with spurts of various condensed gases, giving the room an almost smoky look.

"I get the feeling," Malcolm mumbled as his hand fell instinctively to his phase pistol. The two men had barely crossed the threshold of the heavy, broad doorway, and paused to take their bearings.

"Don't say it," Archer warned, equally low and quiet. He, too, kept one hand near his phase pistol.

"We're not in Kansas anymore," Malcolm replied.

They moved forward carefully, taking their steps slowly as they entered the warehouse. The doors slammed shut behind him, sending a rumbling echo across the room before falling silent again. The room was, Archer guessed, about half full of cargo crates and barrels, but they were hard to distinguish in the shadows of one another.

A rattling, pinging sound scurried through one corner of the room, like a metallic instrument dropped to the floor, bringing both men to a quiet stop.

"Archer to T'Pol," Archer spoke softly, flipping open his communicator. He received nothing but static in response. "Archer to T'Pol," he tried again.

Malcolm shifted one foot behind the other. "Perhaps we should return to where there are more people," he murmured, the circumstances warning him of an ambush.

"I have a feeling that there's plenty of people right here," Archer replied. He drew his pistol from its holster and clicked the safety guards off. "Stand behind me."

The first one came at Malcolm. He jumped from behind a crate to Malcolm's left, wrapping its arms around the tactical chief in a tackling bear hug and driving Malcolm to the ground. The second one came from above, landing about Archer's shoulders.

Archer grunted as his assailant wrapped an arm about Archer's neck, but his senses were drawn to a third attacker, now charging forward. Unleashing a straight kick into the abdomen, Archer sent the third man sprawling backwards, giving him clearance to lift the second man over his head and body slam him into the thermoconcrete flooring.

Bent underneath his own assailant, Malcolm forced himself upward, pulling the strength from his lower body as he straightened up. Scarcely a meter behind him was a stack of crates, and the combination of Malcolm's upward momentum and the weight of the attacker draped over his back sent them into the cargo containers with a rattling thud, but it was a momentary reprieve; from the shadows, a fourth assailant emerged.

After his stellar start, Archer was faring little better. Both of his assailants were quickly off the ground and on their feet, and with coordinated fashion, each grabbed an arm of the captain. He struggled furiously against them, but with little progress. Within moments, Malcolm was similarly subdued.

The two Starfleet officers were marched away in the hands of their captors.

I can break out of this, Trip decided as he surveyed his new surroundings. Trip and T'Pol had reached the warehouse scarce minutes earlier; and like their later comrades, the two officers had been ambushed, subdued, and marched off to the adlibbed holding cell that they now occupied.

Trip's spirits fell slightly as the energy shield flickered off, and Malcolm Reed came staggering through.

On the other side, still in the hands of his captors, was the captain; evidently, his fate was to be different, as the shield was erected with the captain still outside. Archer and T'Pol exchanged a look as the captain was bustled away, down a corridor constructed of crates.

It was a short distance, but his treatment was rough. His attackers—Archer could see, now, that they were Suliban—shoved him along for fifty meters or so, down through a series of conduits and pipes before they came to a clearing in the industrial jungle. This was to be the end point, for they gave him one final shove forward, and rapidly disappeared behind him.

"You're looking for Kla'ang." It was a female voice, and at first, Archer was uncertain of its source; but then a woman emerged from behind a post. She wore a faded red jumpsuit with a cowl over her head, but her features were visible, and they were human. "Why?"

"Who are you?" Archer's tone resided somewhere between a question and a demand for information as the woman stepped closer.

"My name is Sarin," the woman answered, and Archer recognized the name. The woman stepped closer to him. "Tell me about the men who took Kla'ang off your ship."

"I was hoping you could tell me," Archer replied, eyeing her with suspicion as she drew nearer and nearer. "He looked a lot like your friends outside."

"Where were you taking him?" Sarin asked. Her voice was not quite seductive, but Archer could readily imagine a weary traveler taking pleasure in it.

"Why don't you look like your friends?" Archer retorted, angling for whatever advantage he could find. It was weak, but it would have to do.

"Would you prefer I did?" she responded, drawing closer still.

"What I would prefer," Archer answered, "is that you give me Kla'ang back."

Sarin had drawn up in front of the captain, and began to circle around him. "So you can take him where?" she asked.

"Home," Archer answered, turning his head to follow her. "We were just taking him home." As Sarin came back around, Archer spoke again. "You better be careful," he said. "I'm a lot bigger than you are."

"If you're thinking of harming me," she replied, "I'd advise against it." She started running a hand along Archer's chin. "Why were you taking Kla'ang home?"

Archer didn't flinch. "You know," he countered, "under different circumstances, I might be flattered by this."

Sarin reached up and kissed him strongly, but as she backed away, her flesh morphed into the familiar, mottled gray and tan of the Suliban.

"That's…never happened before," Archer commented.

Sarin pushed the cowl back, showing her bare head. "I've been given the ability to measure honesty." The slight cooing tone in her voice had disappeared, and she was down to business. "But it requires close contact."

"You're a Suliban." Archer stated the obvious.

Sarin nodded. "I was a member of the Cabal," she offered, referencing the particular sect of the Suliban. "But not anymore." She turned and started to walk away. "The price of evolution was too high."

"Evolution?" Archer started to follow her, taking care to not draw too close to the exotic woman; something about her screamed danger.

"Some of my people," Sarin replied, coming to a halt, "are so anxious to improve themselves that they lost perspective." She turned and looked back at the human following her.

Archer looked at her skeptically. "So you know I'm not lying to you," he answered. "Now what?"

"Kla'ang was carrying a data packet back to his people," Sarin stated.

Archer frowned. "And how do you know that?" he asked.

"I gave it to him," Sarin answered. Her eyes narrowed slightly, as if expressing surprise. "But you already know that."

The comment struck Archer as odd, but he had another question to ask first. "So why are the—the Cabal trying to prevent Kla'ang from getting home?"

"The Cabal doesn't care if Kla'ang gets home or not," Sarin replied. "They're simply soldiers, carrying out their orders."

"Orders from who?" Archer pressed, rapidly growing tired of the cat-and-mouse session.

"Orders from the distant future," Sarin answered. "We can help you find Kla'ang, but we don't have a starship. You'll have to take us with you." Sarin flinched as a bright energy beam shot towards her, narrowly missing.

Ducking as he ran, Archer sought refuge behind a nearby crate, with Sarin splitting across from him. More shots rained inward, screeching down the corridor at them, but Archer could not make out the source; it was too dark and too far to see.

His phase pistol had been confiscated by his earlier assailants. He would have to improvise.

A shooting battle erupted in front of the holding cell, two of Sarin's comrades on one end of the ad hoc corridor and two of the Cabal's men on the other, but the Cabal had the better vantage point. High and above, they were firing down from shelter, while Sarin's men were reduced to jumping out from cover, firing, and jumping back. First one, then the other, was picked off.

But it provided cover for Archer and Sarin to run down the corridor and enter the fray, as Sarin drilled the first Cabal soldier square in the chest. The second stood up slightly, and fired a wild shot in her direction; it missed, but provided Sarin with the opportunity she needed to drill the second soldier as well. It was a momentary respite, but it would have to do.

Greetings were not in order as Sarin hit the panel controls, bringing down the forcefield gate of the holding cell; and without pausing, she turned and ransacked a storage locker, pulling out four phase pistols.

A screeching burst of energy caught Sarin in the back.

Malcolm turned and fired, tracking the ray back to its source with speed and accuracy. From atop a pile of crates, a thud resounded, the sound of a body falling, but it was too late for Sarin.

With a grimace from the captain, the landing party turned and fled up the corridor, vacating the warehouse scarce seconds before station security burst in.

"Hoshi, report," Archer ordered as he entered the bridge from the rear, glad to see that the bridge crew was alert and prepped to leave at a moment's notice. It spoke well of Hoshi's burgeoning command skills, the ones which she believed she didn't have.

"A pack of Suliban cell ships just left orbit," she reported as she vacated the central chair, moving back to the communications console. Ensign Stali quickly vacated the post, allowing the chief communications officer to slide into it. "We're tracking the decay rate of their engines, sir. And, captain—the trading post's security office is contacting us with questions. I recommend we leave quickly, if we're going to leave at all."

Captain's Log, Stardate September 17, 2154. We've been tracking the Suliban ships for ten hours, thanks to T'Pol who was able to tweak the sensors to track the tricylic plasma decay of the cell ships. I have no reason to believe that Kla'ang is still alive, but if what the Suliban woman told me is true, more is riding on this than simply returning one Klingon to his homeworld. But what?

The communications chime sounded, pulling Archer from his recording. "Archer to T'Pol," he called out, hitting the pause button as he spoke. "Report."

"Captain." The Vulcan's voice carried its usual serious mien, but he was learning to distinguish between Vulcan serious and Vulcan serious. This, he thought, was the latter. "Please report to the bridge."

"On my way," he responded, raising to his feet. It was a short distance, barely a hop, skip, and a jump, across his ready room and out onto the Enterprise's bridge.

A large, orange planet filled the viewscreen.

"It's a gas giant," T'Pol reported. Despite having been in command of the bridge, the science officer in her had chosen to stay at the science consoles on the rear port side of the bridge.

"From the looks of it," Archer added, sizing up the picture on the viewscreen, "a class six or seven."

"Class seven," T'Pol confirmed. "The Suliban vessels dropped to impulse a few hours ago and altered their course. Their new heading took them through its outer radiation belt."

It didn't take any specialty degrees for Archer to grasp the implication. "We've lost them," he replied, more a statement than a question.

"Yes, sir," T'Pol answered nonetheless.

Archer sighed as he sat down in his chair. "Move us in closer, Travis," he ordered, unwilling to give up easily.

"Aye, sir, one-quarter impulse," Travis acknowledged. The helmsman used his own best judgment to set the starship's speed.

The bridge fell silent for a moment as the Enterprise moved forward, closing in on the planet's dangerous radiation belt.

"It's no good, sir," Commander Reed called out from his post across from T'Pol. His voice sounded dejected as he spoke. "The radiation has dissipated their plasma trail. I'm only picking up fragments."

"Commander," T'Pol spoke suddenly, inadvertently cutting off the captain. "Run a spectral analysis of the fragments."

Malcolm hit his controls, superimposing the scan results over the growing planet on the viewscreen for the entire bridge crew to see. The fragments were clearly visible, but the analysis made little sense. "There's too much distortion, sir," he reported, after a several second pause. "The decay rates don't even match."

T'Pol spoke up again. "Calculate the trajectory of each fragment," she ordered. "Recalibrate the sensor array, narrow band, short to mid-range."

"Aye, sir," Malcolm replied. He was uncertain of just what she had seen, but hope crept back into his voice.

"Now measure the particle density of the thermosphere," T'Pol commanded.

On the viewscreen, multiple trails emerged, each traveling along a similar trajectory.

Archer smiled. "Good work, T'Pol," he said. "Those fragments weren't from one Suliban pack."

"I calculate that they were from fourteen," the Vulcan confirmed, "and all within the last six hours. I believe we have found what we're looking for."

Archer nodded as he gripped the arms of his command chair. "Bring the weapons online," he ordered, "and polarize the hull plating. Lay in a sixty degree vector, Travis. We're going in." A chorus of ayes answered him.

The Enterprise moved into the lethal radiation belt of the gas giant.

"Did Sarin give them anything?" the shadow rumbled, clearly displeased with the report it had just received. The temporal communications chamber was Silik's first stop upon the cell pack's arrival at the Helix, and now, Silik was less than certain of his choice.

"I don't know," the Suliban Cabal leader admitted. His voice remained sharp, and something less than apologetic. "We weren't able to eavesdrop on their conversation."

The shadow growled again. "What do you know?" it demanded, in tones harsh and unforgiving. Silik had been a loyal and effective operative for many years; it was unusual for the Cabal leader to flub an assignment like this, but the shadow could little tolerate such errors.

"They followed us here," Silik retorted, his voice hurtling an accusation at the shadow. The cell ships' new propulsion systems were supposed to be untrackable by contemporary technology; the shadow had all but guaranteed it, and yet, at last report, the human starship had entered orbit of the gas giant that protected the Suliban Helix within its thick clouds.

"Looking for Kla'ang?" the shadow stressed, placing emphasis on the name. "Or for you?"

Silik bristled, but held his tone. "I don't know," he replied, his voice still sharp. "But I will destroy them before they locate the Helix."

"This has gone far enough," the shadow countered gruffly. "We didn't plan on involving Starfleet. Your easy, surgical strike is falling apart, Silik. But that data pack cannot reach Kronos. If the Starfleeters have it, you must stop them."

"Sensor resolution's falling off at about twelve kilometers," Hoshi reported nervously, growing more and more uncomfortable as the Enterprise descended into the cloud banks of the planet below. The possibility of flying blind did little to help.

"Travis?" Archer called out, following up on Hoshi's report.

"I'm okay, Captain," the helmsman replied confidently. "I have plenty of visibility."

"Our situation should improve," T'Pol added from the rear of the bridge, where she was still manning the science sensors. "We're about to break through the cyclohexane layer." Almost as she quit speaking, the ship was hit with a shudder, one that didn't stop.

"I wouldn't exactly call this an improvement," Archer called out.

"Liquid phosphorus." T'Pol's curiosity was piqued by the unexpected development. "I wouldn't have expected this beneath a layer of cyclohexane."

"You might think about recommending seat belts when we get home," Hoshi added, her thoughts running in a decidedly different direction. Another hard shudder of the ship sent the bridge crew lurching to port.

"It's just a little bad weather," Archer replied, equally for everyone's benefit; the unspoken fact was that the Enterprise had never been rated under these conditions, and it was only the crew's faith in their starship that brought them plunging down into the giant's atmosphere like a lead balloon in a hurricane.

Hoshi breathed an audible sigh of relief as the Enterprise leveled off in a clear plane, sandwiched by storms above and below. "We've got sensors!" she called out in somewhat shrill relief. The young lieutenant was doing her best, but these were the sort of situations that encouraged her to stay in Brazil.

Archer felt his ass settle square in his chair as the turbulence slowed to a halt. "Go to long-range scans," he ordered, stepping up from his seat and towards the viewscreen, as if his proximity would somehow help the sensors.

T'Pol picked them up first. "I'm detecting two vessels, bearing one-one-nine-mark-seven." The Vulcan's usual equanimity was unrattled, even as she put force behind her words.

"Put it up," Archer ordered, hovering over Travis' right shoulder.

Two blobs appeared onscreen, their lines fuzzy and covered with static.

"I'm reading impulse and warp engines," Malcolm reported, running his hands over the tactical sensor controls. "The ship design is—I'm sorry, sir, it's unreadable. There's too much interference."

Archer looked back over his shoulder. "Can you read any weapons, Commander?" he asked, knowing the likely answer.

Malcolm shook his head. "We're too far away."

"Sir," Travis broke in. "I'm picking up something at three-four-two-mark-one-two. It's a lot bigger."

Archer couldn't help but smile. "On screen, Lieutenant."

Even through the static, the structure was large; in shape, it roughly—very roughly—resembled the familiar mushroom of Earth's new starbase design, but the details were blurred in distortion.

"All sensors," Archer called out. "Get whatever you can. Any biosigns?"

"Over three thousand," Hoshi replied, taking a quick second to read the results of her scan. "But I can't isolate a Klingon—if there even is one."

"INCOMING!" Malcolm shouted across the bridge, a scarce second before the ship rocked, nearly tossing the standing crew from their feet. "That was a particle weapon, sir!"

The ship's comm system crackled to life as Archer stumbled back to his chair, the ship rocking again as another weapons blast hit. "Bridge!" Trip Tucker's voice came through clearly from engineering. "We're taking damage down here! What's going on?"

"Just a little trouble with the bad guys!" Archer responded. "Malcolm, I need a ten-four on them! T'Pol—"

T'Pol answered the question before it was even spoken. "I suggest we return to the phosphorus layer, sir." It was a calculated risk, assuming that the unknown assailants were no better suited for the dense storm layer than the Enteprise, but in their current location, the starship was little more than a sitting duck.

"Take us up!" Archer ordered, and on his command, Travis angled the bow upward and shot the ship forward, taking her sailing towards the thick clouds above.

It was eerie, sitting blindly in the buffeting winds of a monstrous storm, knowing that another ship—or several—were outside, hunting for you. But somehow, Archer's calmness made it work.

"What've you got?" the captain asked as he approached T'Pol and Hoshi. Their gamble had seemingly worked; at least, since entering the phosphorus, the Enterprise had taken no enemy fire, freeing the two women to analyze the scattered sensor readings that they had obtained.

"It appears to be an aggregate structure comprised of hundreds of cell ships," T'Pol replied. She and Hoshi were at the rear of the bridge, working over the table-top display; now, it revealed what appeared to be a lumpen mishmash of roughly cylindrical proportion with an off-balance cap on one end, the whole thing an ugly approximation of a spacedock.

"They're held in place by an interlocking system of magnetic seals," Hoshi added. She shifted the display view to a false-image structural analysis and zoomed in, revealing what appeared to be several Suliban cell ships clustered together. "It looks like it's meant purely for habitation. Even though the cell ships can fly as a pack, we're hypothesizing that the larger—mess here—is relatively immobile." And she was on the mark; the Suliban hive, while composed of thousands of variable cell ships, was a fixed object in space, incapable of substantive travel on its own. Instead, buried deep inside the currents of the gas giant, it was a place of retreat and relative safety for the dwindling and hunted Suliban race.

Archer nodded in understanding. "And anything regarding Kla'ang?" he asked, hopefully.

Keeping the display in false-image, T'Pol zoomed it back out to encompass the entire hive. "Right there," she answered, indicating a newly-blinking light. "The bio-readings are different than the rest of the—mess," she added, incorporating Hoshi's description of the hive. "They do not appear to be Suliban.

"But we can't be certain that they're Klingon," Hoshi countered, breaking the bad half of the news. "Or even the right Klingon."

Archer sighed, and started rubbing his chin absently. "Even if it is Kla'ang, we'd have a tough time getting him out of there," the captain added, taking stock of the situation. The anomalous lifesigns were buried deep in the heart of the hive. They needed to land someone inside, someone to do onsite reconnoitering…and even then, if the lifesigns were Kla'ang's, how to get him out?

"Malcolm," Archer called out suddenly, raising his voice to carry across the bridge. As bidden, the tactical officer tilted his body and turned his head to look back at the captain. "Would the grappler work in a liquid atmosphere?"

Malcolm pursed his lips. "I believe so," he replied slowly, taking his time to formulate an answer. "If we use it in one of the clear belts, that is." The hurricane-strength winds and soup-like densities of their current position inside a storm belt would render the grappler inoperable.

"Bring it online," Archer ordered with a faint smile as he crossed the bridge, on his way to the command chair. "Take us down one more time, Travis."

"Aye, sir," Travis echoed acknowledgment of the command, and with the appropriate inputs, he eased the nose of the starship downward, holding the Enterprise steady against the buffeting winds of the storm; onscreen, the liquid eddies slowly dissipated as they neared the lower edge of the storm belt. It took slightly over a minute for the view to clear completely.

The battle was on.

"Incoming!" Malcolm called out, even as the last wisps of soup washed away from the viewscreen. Two Suliban cell ships were blinking on his sensor display, and within moments, the Enterprise rocked from the impact of weapons fire.

"Hold your fire, Commander!" Archer ordered, not wanting to damage either of the potential prizes. It was a matter of biding his time, waiting for the right moment…baiting the right trap.

"The ventral plating's down!" Malcolm reported as the starship shook again, absorbing the impact of the Suliban energy weapons. Like the rest of Suliban technology, the weaponry packed a powerful punch in a small ship.

But the right moment hadn't arrived yet. "Hold your position," Archer ordered.

"Holding position, aye, sir," Travis repeated, and the bridge rocked again. Emergency sirens started blaring across the compartment, adding an uncomfortable shrillness to the bass impacts of weapons fire on the duranium hull.

"The lead ship's closing," Malcolm reported, clutching his console to keep from being tossed aside. "Seven thousand meters. Six thousand."

Feeling the battering that his ship was taking, Archer grimaced harshly. "Keep holding, Travis," he ordered, speaking through clenched teeth.

"Aye, sir." Travis spoke with a slight tone of excitement in his voice.

"One thousand meters!" Malcolm called out, then: "Forward plating's offline!"

Archer wanted closer, but it would have to do. "Now, Malcolm!" he shouted.

From the belly of the starship, a turret emerged, hanging beneath the superstructure of the Enterprise. Pivoting, its targeting scanners located the prey, and two grappling hooks shot out at the nearby cell ship. The first one missed, passing slightly off to starboard of the small craft; but the second struck home, its claws latching on with unyielding intent. As the grappler reeled its prey in, the cell ship's pilot ejected from the craft, a rapidly billowing parachute showing his position as he quickly blew away.

Malcolm followed the action on his console. "The ship's secured in the launch bay," he reported, receiving the all-clear from two crewmen down below.

Archer sat sternly in his chair, refusing to relax, but he felt an air of pride in his crew. "Take us up, Travis," he ordered, and on command, the Enterprise ascended back into the cover of the storm belt above.

"Ask me another one," Trip commanded, a broad smile on his face. There were few things the engineer loved more than getting his hands on new technology.

"All right," Travis replied, pointing to another control. "What's this?" The two officers, along with the captain, were clustered around the captured cell ship in the launch bay; midway through their crash training course, Tucker was sitting behind the controls, while the remaining two men were leaning inward through the open hatch.

"The pitch control?" Trip answered, raising both eyebrows with hope.

"No." Travis pointed to another, entirely different, set of controls. "That's the pitch control. This is the guidance system." It had taken the helm officer less than an hour, with Hoshi translating, to decipher and understand the systems of the cell ship. They were now at two hours and counting for Commander Tucker to learn.

"Right," Trip replied. He pointed at one, then the other. "Pitch control. Guidance system. Got it."

Travis held back a sigh of exasperation. "The docking interface," he said, deliberately switching topics to keep the commander off-balance. "How do you deploy it?"

"Release the inertial clampers, here, and…here," Trip answered, pointing as he spoke. "Then initialize the coaxial ports over…here."

"Good," Travis replied. "Now, where's the auxiliary throttle?"

"Hmm," Trip responded, scrunching up his face as he thought. He pointed arbitrarily to a new set of controls. "It's not this one."

Now the sigh of exasperation came through as Travis turned to the captain. "With all due respect to Commander Tucker," he said, "I can fly this thing, sir."

Archer smiled. "I don't doubt that," he answered, and he didn't doubt it; Travis was easily the most qualified pilot on the ship, even at the controls of a stolen alien cell ship. "But I need you here."

"There, that's it," Trip intervened suddenly, pointing again. "The auxiliary throttle."

As he spoke, the Enterprise rocked gently.

"Captain." T'Pol's voice emerged over the intercom, cutting into the flying lesson. "That charge contained a proximity sweep. If we remain here much longer, they will locate us."

"Acknowledged, Commander," Archer called out in the general direction of the ceiling, then turned his attention back to the task at hand. "You're going to have to speed this up a little, Travis."

"How complicated can it be?" Trip said, breaking into a broad grin. "Up, down, forward, reverse. We'll figure it out."

Travis sighed silently.

"Don't worry," Archer said, gracing his Vulcan science officer with a decidedly non-Vulcan smile. The two senior officers were in the captain's ready room, comparing their final notes before the raiding party departed. "We'll be back before you know it."

"There is a considerable risk that you won't be back at all," T'Pol replied. She countered the captain's smile with a raised eyebrow. "Do I need to calculate the factors for you?"

Archer couldn't hold back a sly grin. "Am I sensing concern?" he asked, his smile broadening. It wasn't often that he had a chance to tease the diminutive Vulcan, and he wasn't passing up the opportunity. "Last time I checked, that was considered an emotion."

"If anything happens to either of you," T'Pol said, retorting with a glare, "Starfleet will hold me responsible."

It's good to have her back, Archer reflected inwardly. Somehow, at some point, T'Pol had grown on him to the point of being unreplaceable. "Have Travis plot a course for Kronos," he ordered, shifting back to a more formal tone. The Klingon homeworld was still over a week away, but the exact coordinates were available in the standby Vulcan database. "The ship is yours, Commander."

What's it like being submerged in the tempest of a gas giant with only a cramped Suliban cell ship at your back? Sorta like—Archer flipped through several options in his mind before settling on the obvious. It's like being submerged in the tempest of a gas giant with only a cramped Suliban cell ship at your back.

Being confined in small spaces was a staple of Starfleet training; many Starfleet vessels had cockpits that were little larger than the interior of the cell ship that he and Trip Tucker now occupied. Archer himself had flown several of them, and generally enjoyed the experience.

This is…different, Archer reflected. Without warning, the cell ship jumped two meters starboard as it collided with a powerful jet of gas; they were nearly blind, flying in the thick muck of the gas giant's atmosphere, dependent on sensors written in a language that they couldn't even read.

And the pressure outside the hull could flatten a human body into the size of a baseball. Now that's an archaic reference, Archer realized wryly.

Another blast—this one gentler, but just as powerful—caught the cell ship from below, lifting it upward before falling away; and the cell ship plummeted, only to be caught in another current that sent the ship careening wildly, slamming from side to side as it nearly spun out of control.

"What's that?" Archer barked, speaking for the first time as he grasped hold of a well-placed duranium handle. It did little to ease the sense of sheer powerlessness that he felt, but it at least saved his shoulder from a bone-shattering collision with the inner hull.

Trip's eyes jumped to the blinking controls. "Travis said not to worry about that panel."

Archer could only glare at his engineer.

Seeing the incoming strike, Travis gripped the edges of his control panel tightly, and the Enterprise rumbled mightily. His hands flew over the controls as he sought to steady the lurching starship and bring it about to its original position.

"That one was a lot closer," the navigator called out, directing the comment generally over his shoulder to the rest of the bridge crew. It was a miss, but not by enough; and each one was drawing closer. It was like old-fashioned submarine warfare in a sea of gas and muck; the Suliban cell ships, much harder to detect due to their size, were gradually bracketing the Enterprise by following the echoes of the concussive shockwaves.

Behind him, Travis heard Malcolm Reed. "If we change our position," the tactical officer observed, "they'll have to start from scratch."

Travis could almost hear the glare of T'Pol's eyes in her answer. "If we change our position," she countered, "the captain will have no way of finding us."

"I think we're there," Trip commented as he let out a long breath; the tension in the cell ship was high as he and the captain made their final approach to the Suliban Helix. Neither of the Starfleeters had moved an unnecessary muscle for meters, almost as if concerned that the slightest movement inside the pod would be enough to give them away.

"Bring the docking interface online," Archer ordered. He scanned the blinking controls with his eyes, trying to recall what all of the signals meant in the alien craft.

When Trip didn't immediately reply, Archer turned to check in and found the engineer doing the same. "The coaxial ports," Archer clarified. "There's a—panel or something."

"I got it," Trip answered a moment later as he located the docking controls, next to the exit hatch. He punched in the necessary code sequence, and the panel sparked to life. "We're online."

"Let's go," Archer stated.

"Sir, I—" Trip starred at the docking controls inquisitively; right there, in front of him, the external scanners should have shown the exterior of another docking hatch. "Where is it? It was right here."

"Bank starboard," Archer commented as he checked the gyrostabilizers; in the course of their brief conversation, the currents of gas had already pulled them off-position. "Ninety degrees."

"There you go," Trip responded softly, more to himself than the captain. With the correction, the scanners now indicated that they were aligned for docking.

"That's the upper support radius," Archer countered with a slight smile; he understood that the alien images were hard to understand. "Let me drop down right below it. I'm starting a counter-clockwise sweep." The pod started to move again. "A little more…a little more…" They came to an abrupt halt as they bumped into another pod. "Right there," Archer grinned sheepishly. "Let's get moving."

"Incoming!" Hoshi shouted out, raising her voice to be heard over the rumble of concussive waves besetting the starship; the shrill whine in her earpiece blanketed her mind, forcing her to rip out the delicate piece of equipment. "Grab on to something—"

Before she could even finish, a big, thunderous BOOM rocked the Enterprise, and Hoshi's knuckles whitened as they clenched her into place, fighting against the lunatic tilting of the deck.

"This is ridiculous!" Malcolm's voice cut through the shuddering as he, too, gripped his console tightly to avoid being thrown against a bulkhead; from the corner of her eye, Hoshi could see the tactical chief arched over, braced between two panels. "If we don't move the ship, Captain Archer won't have anything to look for when he gets back!"

T'Pol, too, had apparently had enough; the sound of the ship shaking itself to pieces around her was enough to unnerve even the steady Vulcan as a sense of prudent self-preservation crept in. "We're going to need that ear of yours, Ensign!" She raised her voice, directing the first comment at Hoshi; then, to Travis, "Move us away five kilometers!"

Travis waited a moment, and then queried: "In what direction?"

T'Pol's response was uttered with perfect dryness. "Any direction."

During his previous visit to a Suliban Helix—in the uproar leading to the Xindi mission—Jonathan Archer had been transported directly into an anteroom leading to a communications chamber. Clean, roughly antiseptic, and spacious, the two rooms had showcased the best of Suliban modernity.

The rest of the Helix, Archer was rapidly discovering, was anything but.

It's a wonder we haven't been stopped yet, Archer reflected as he and Tucker rapidly made their way through the cell-like portions of the Helix, moving in the rough approximation of a search pattern. There were enough Suliban residents that it seemed one of them would send up an alarm; provided, of course, that the blighted aliens knew that there were intruders aboard the Helix.

And perhaps they don't, Archer realized, acknowledging that he knew very little about the inner workings of a Suliban Helix. By all appearances, after all, it was not a starship; instead, the Helix was a disjointed series of smaller craft, some as small as the cell ships, some as large as the Enterprise's engine bay. But it was not simply the size and type of craft that distinguished the two.

The Helix looked more like a refugee camp than a functioning starcraft.

Dust and dirt were everywhere, on the walls, on the people, on the aging equipment; the sense of—anticleanliness—was impossible to escape, and more than once, Archer had to rub grit from his eyes as he hacked up a cloud of particulates.

Then, too, the cell-rooms themselves often appeared to be little more than storage pods, beaten and battered, but often contained what looked like homes of sorts; cots and beds and rags on the floor spoke more to living arrangements than engineering needs.

But it was the people that spoke most loudly to the captain. To a person, they were subdued; many heads sagged low, buried in tattered clothing and wrapped in dusty cloaks that had long since seen their prime, the Suliban inhabitants were dirty and thin, many with visible sores. Very few raised an eye as the two humans passed; even fewer seemed to blink, clearly unmoved to raise any sort of alarm.

It was a different view of the Suliban.

On the umpteenth try—Archer had lost count of the number of rooms they had passed through—the two humans burst into a medical chamber. A lone Klingon, writhing in his sleep, was strapped to a chair in the center, wires running from monitors attached to his skin.

Archer spoke in his best reassuring tone. "It's okay," he said, lightly shaking Klaang. The Klingon snorted and came alive, fighting against the heavy straps. "It's okay," Archer repeated. "We're here to get you out. We're taking you home, okay? I just need you to calm down."

Klaang, only half-awake and barely lucid, continued to struggle against his restraints.

"Calm DOWN!" Archer said again, raising his tone to the steely voice of command. This time, it started to sink in to the fevered Klingon; and although his muscles remained tight, Klaang ceased his struggling.

Trip already had the medical monitors stripped from the Klingon, and together, the captain and the engineer fumbled with the straps; when they were nearly complete, Klaang growled loudly and forced his way to standing, ripping the remnants of the restraints to shreds in the process. With a heavy hand, he shoved Trip away and to the floor.

"Hold on!" Archer cautioned quickly, uncertain of Klaang's mental state; the Klingon was likely dazed and confused, acting more on a warrior's instincts than any sort of rational thought. Unstrapping his phase pistol, the captain pointed his weapon directly at Klaang. "We're friends! We're taking you home!"

Klaang growled again, but ceased his fight.

"I think he gets it, Captain," Trip said. He rolled over on his hands and knees, working hard to catch his breath, and he clambered to his feet. "Are we okay?" he demanded, turning to the Klingon.

Klaang nodded slowly, and jutted his chin out. "Qu'taw bob!" he snarled, and with a violent gesture, he pointed first to himself and the humans, then at the door.

"We're good, Captain," Trip added wryly. The universal translator was, no doubt, working fine; and Klaang, in his uncertain state, simply wasn't making any sense to the advanced equipment.

Archer, still holding his pistol with his right hand, slung his left arm beneath the Klingon; and with Trip flanking on the other side, the two officers began to steer Klaang towards the door. The Klingon staggered at first, his weight held up only by the grasp of the two humans; but after several steps, Klaang's feet straightened out, and he began holding his own weight.

"Let's go," Archer muttered, eager to be moving on; medical alerts were sounding throughout the small chamber.

The pulse of an energy weapon ripped through the room, narrowly missing Trip as the engineer flinched. "Captain!" Trip exclaimed, drawing Archer's attention forward; two Suliban were in the doorway, each hugging the wall on either side.

Archer's return fire drilled one of the Suliban, tossing the alien backward onto the rickety deck plating even as Klaang roared mightily. Hefting himself firmly to his feet, the Klingon, encouraged by the prospect of battle, charged forward to the second Suliban; and a quick one-two sequence of punches lifted their foe from his feet, driving him back onto the floor.

"Thanks," Trip muttered.

Another energy pulse lashed forward from behind them.

"Get back to the ship," Archer ordered roughly, twisting about to see two more Suliban in the doorway behind them. "I'll be right behind you." Pointing his phase pistol, he fired, narrowly missing his target.

Klaang muttered an ugly Klingon curse, but didn't fight back as the engineer pushed him down the forward passageway, away the developing firefight in the medical chamber.

"They're getting closer!" Malcolm shouted loudly as the Enterprise rocked again; it had taken their Suliban foes less than a minute to re-bracket the Starfleet ship.

Trip Tucker nearly fell with momentum into the waiting cell ship. "Where are you, Captain?" he shouted, flipping open his communicator in one fluid motion; behind him, as the engineer scrambled quickly out of the way, Klaang tumbled into the small craft.

"Still in the medical chamber." The captain's voice crackled over the communicator. "Get Klaang back to the Enterprise."

Trip's hands were already fumbling with the cell ship's launch controls as he responded. "What about you, sir?"

"Get Klaang back to the ship," Archer repeated. The sharp whine of an energy pulse could be heard behind his voice. "You can come back for me."

Trip's hairs stood on end, but an order was an order. "Aye, sir!" he responded, shouting to ensure that he was heard; the sounds of the battle were heating up. "It's going to be hard to isolate your biosigns, so stay as far away from the Suliban as you can!"

A second passed before Archer answered. "Believe me, I'll try," the captain responded hurriedly. "Archer out." A sharp click indicated that the connection had been severed.

"RaQ'l jadICH!" Klaang gestured roughly as he cursed again.

"Believe me, I don't particularly like the way you smell, either," Trip retorted; he took care, however, to not eye the big Klingon as he spoke. Finally locating the docking controls, he punched the departure sequence.

With a shudder, the cell ship detached from the Helix and jetted away.

T'Pol resisted the urge to duck as a power conduit exploded in the corner of the bridge, showering the vacant engineering substation with debris. "Move us another five kilometers, Lieutenant!" she shouted, struggling to be heard over the quaking din.

Trip looked at his sensor readings with dismay. "I don't get it," he muttered, cross-checking his readings. "This is right where the Enterprise is supposed to be."

"Commander!" Hoshi shouted with elation as a green light popped onto her communications console. "I think I've got something!"

"Put it through!" T'Pol ordered immediately.

The bridge's speakers were filled with static, but T'Pol's sharpened Vulcan hearing could pick up the remnants of a voice. "Amplify it!"

Hoshi's hands flew over her controls. "I think it's Commander Tucker!" she said.

At the rear of the bridge, Malcolm shook his head. "All I hear is noise!"

"It's just a narrow notch in the mid-range!" Hoshi countered. She closed her eyes and pressed her earpiece in tight. "He says he's about to ignite his thruster exhaust!"

"I'm reading it!" Malcolm replied a split second later. "One-fifty-eight-mark-one-three!"

"Laid in!" Travis shouted back.

"Ahead," T'Pol ordered, taking a moment to note the extreme efficiency of the bridge crew. "Fifty kph. Take it slow and steady, Lieutenant Mayweather, and initiate docking procedures."

I know this place, Archer thought with regret as he reached the end of a sequence of cells, finding himself in—for the Helix—a large room, roughly circular in shape. He had been in a similar place once before.

It was a temporal communications room, like the one in which he had previously spoken to the mysterious, futuristic benefactor of Silik's team of genetically-enhanced Suliban mercenaries.

And sure enough, Silik was present—somewhere. "You're wasting your time," the Suliban's disembodied voice said, entering the communications chamber from above. "Klaang knows nothing."

"Perhaps not," Archer ventured. He moved his hand rapidly, noting the temporal blur of his movement as time itself lagged to compensate. "Where are you, Silik? Why don't you drop this invisible man routine? Or are you scared?"

Malcolm gripped the edges of his console as the Enterprise shook yet again. "Hull plating's been repolarized!" he announced.

T'Pol nodded. "Stand by impulse engines," she ordered. "Mister Tucker, status!"

Upon reaching the Enterprise, Trip Tucker's destination had not been engineering, nor even the bridge; instead, he had made his way at a full run to the ship's transporter alcove. "The auto-sequencer's online," he reported, reading the controls before him. "But annular confinement's still off by two microns!"

"That should suffice," T'Pol's voice answered.

"In this muck?" Trip answered softly. "Easy for you to say!"

"You wouldn't have come looking for Klaang if Sarin had to you everything she knew," Silik continued, his voice virtually dripping with smoothness. "You're no threat to me, Jonathan, but it's time for you to leave."

"This chameleon thing is pretty fancy," Archer countered, looking around for any tell-tale signs of the Suliban's location. "Was it payment for pitting the Klingons against each other? Or another trophy from your Temporal Cold—oomph!" The captain flew backward, landing awkwardly on his tailbone.

Above him, Silik shimmered into existence. "I was going to let you go," the Suliban hissed, and with a quick, blurred movement, he reached down, ripping Archer's phase pistol from his grasp. "For old times' sake, and all, Captain."

Archer grinned crookedly, trying to ignore the pain shooting up his back. "Really? Somehow I don't believe you, Silik."

Time, already blurred, seemed to slow down even more as Silik fired the phase pistol. Archer, watching the slow-moving beam of light erupting towards him, was so astonished that he barely remembered to move, rolling out of the way at the last possible…second? Measurements of time seemed a little questionable.

Shifting to his feet, Archer pushed himself upward and forward, catching Silik firm in the chest; the Suliban drifted backward into the air before slowly following to the deck plating. "What's the matter?" Archer taunted, grabbing the now-floating phase pistol out of midair. "No genetic tricks to keep you from getting knocked on your ass?"

Silik gradually rolled backwards, popping up to his feet. "What you call tricks," he retorted, "we call progress! Are you aware that your own genome is almost identical to that of an ape?" He snorted loudly. "We don't share your patience with natural selection!"

"So to speed things up a little," Archer countered, pointing the phase pistol, "you struck a deal with the devil!" He pulled the trigger, and a phased energy beam emerged like molasses from the weapon.

"We have four more incoming on starboard!" Malcolm shouted as the Enterprise shook yet again—almost wearily, tired at the continued onslaught.

"Commander Tucker, NOW!" T'Pol shouted, as loud as she ever had.

Captain Archer materialized in the transporter alcove of the Enterprise. "Bridge, we've got him!" Trip shouted back.

"Engage!"

Chapter Four

Despite himself, Captain Archer couldn't help but feel small.

The Great Hall of the Klingon Empire was designed to make even the bravest warriors of the Empire feel humbled, and the captain found himself not so immune to the effects of the imposing Chamber.

Dark and medieval in feel, and made of stone and metal, the Great Hall dwarfed Captain Archer, Commander T'Pol, Lieutenant Sato, and even the large Klaang as they stood in the doorway, leading from the small antechamber outside. The Hall—some fifty or plus feet along every wall, and longer than it was wide—stood tall above them, the main floor flanked by galleries along the base and two sides; beyond, a pitched ceiling towered overhead, disappearing somewhere above the light of torches ensconced along the bases of the giant rafters.

Most of the floor, leading up to the front dais, was made of a pure black stone, and a giant Klingon trefoil was emblazoned in red, pointing the way to the platform ahead where a row of aging Klingon warriors awaited the Starfleet trio.

At the center stood a tall, imposing Klingon, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. Dressed in fur and leather, his long hair more gray than brown, it was the Chancellor; M'Rek, the functioning leader of the great Klingon Empire, second in power only to the once and future Emperor, Kahless himself.

"What do you want?" M'Rek barked loudly, challenging the petitioners to speak.

Archer gulped and stepped forward. "I am Jonathan Archer of Earth, Captain of the Starship Enterprise," he proclaimed firmly.

"And what is it that you want, Jonathan Archer?" the Chancellor repeated himself, almost sneering at the name. "Or do you intend to waste our time with platitudes?"

"We have returned the warrior Klaang to the Empire," Archer stated, refusing to back down.

M'Rek looked down at Klaang. "Step up, Klaang, son of J'Rel," he intoned. "Account for yourself."

Klaang lowered his hairy head as he stepped forward. "My name is Klaang, son of J'Rel," he repeated. His voice did not boom outward, and he seemed to speak with chastisement. "I—have completed my mission."

A murmur of Klingon whispers rippled through the Great Hall as M'Rek stepped down the twin stairs, coming to a stop an arm's-length before the warrior. "Did you?" the Chancellor replied. "Or did these Earthers complete it for you?"

Klaang shifted his feet, visibly discomfited. "I have disgraced the Empire," he acknowledged, not challenging the assertion. "These Earthers would not let me die honorably, and have dragged me back from the path to Sto'Vo'Kor. But I stand ready to die, now, for my failures."

M'Rek grunted. "And you shall have your day of reckoning," he replied. "You. Jonathan Archer, of the Earth Starship. You should leave. Now. And be thankful that I do not kill you for dishonoring this once-noble warrior. ChugDah hegh! Volcha va!"

Archer leaned towards Hoshi. "What did he say?" the captain whispered in her ear. He was realizing, almost for the first moment, just how far away from home they actually were.

"You don't want to know," she replied, equally quietly.

"Captain," T'Pol intervened softly, "I think we should leave."

"ChugDah hegh!" M'Rek repeated, gesturing violently towards the door.

Archer opened his mouth to reply, but a sharp nudge from Hoshi hastily shut it; and together, the threesome turned about and left quickly, letting the heavy chamber doors slam shut behind them.

If they had stayed—if—they would have seen M'Rek slice Klaang's hand with his d'k'tahg; and they would have watched as M'Rek captured the flowing blood in a vial. A functionary stepped forward, carrying a piece of equipment, and M'Rek carefully inserted the vial into a tubular opening.

If they had stayed—if—they would have seen the results of the blood scan rolling across the screen, revealing the coded information stored within the courier's blood.

And if—if Phlox had accompanied them—the doctor would have recognized the coded information as being a string of augmented human DNA.


End file.
